~ This blog will be an attempt to explain the significance of various works of great writing, the authors that create them, and some effort to understand correlations between great writing and contemporary events.

I’m am greatly tempted to call myself an existentialist but I’ve never read Kapital by Karl Marx all the way through. I’ve never read Being and Nothingness either though so perhaps my desire for identity is just egomaniacal. This is all an overly distracting way of saying I’m thinking about adding another identity to myself alongside atheist, feminist, bisexual, and democrat, but the angry mob that chases me from place to place is already large enough and I don’t think adding angry philosophy professors and Marxists is really the best idea for this stage of life. Angry mobs are starting to unionize now and I can’t afford to pay for any more benefits, you understand of course.

I’m glad that you found the Nietzsche essay enjoyable, I’m positive that’s the first time that statement’s ever appeared in print, and I’m glad Charlie agrees with me that Margot Robbie is…is…

Ahem. I was uh…saying something.

I was happy to receive your letter, and in fact it was part of my motivation for beginning a new series of letters that we can share. If I understood, you correctly from a previous essay you have some questions about Existentialism. Let me be clear then. As with the atheist letters I am not placing myself as an authority of Existentialism as a movement for as of this writing I’m still learning the implications, ethos, methodology, and overall idea of the movement along with familiarizing myself with the writers who contributed the most to it. Like you, and I’m going off of your letter here, I was mostly taught that Existentialism was about meaninglessness of existence and how life was hollow and pointless and we were all going to die and there was no afterlife and so existence was pointless, the end.

Such is the cartoon character that is existentialism but not the reality. My little sister received the Great Courses audio lecture No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life taught by Robert C. Solomon, and I’m positive that my regular readers are getting sick of hearing his name because I’ve mentioned it in like five to six essays in the last two months. I keep returning to these lectures however B—– because they’ve had a profound, and I don’t use that word lightly here, impact upon me. It’s been a lovely experience for me because despite the popular image of Existentialists flipping coins next to dead horses and screaming “why” to the heavens with a clenched fist, the philosophy I’ve been studying is actually positive and life affirming. The reason I’ve warmed up to Existentialism is because I finally understand what the Philosophy is about and I find a lot of the ideas since with my worldview already.

From this lecture, along with my other readings, I’ve come to the conclusion that Existentialism places responsibility above everything else, upon the individual and the choices they make.

Existentialism can be a bit brusque concerning institutions like Christianity, but the lecturer Robert C. Solomon does an excellent job demonstrating that many of the writings of these philosophers really pushes towards this idea that human life is its own and that people can and should embrace their choices for there is not only their mettle but also their character. This idea of choice is fascinating, and also validating since I have no choice but to believe in free will.

That’s a philosophy joke in case you missed it.

While the series covered Camus, Kierkegaurd, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the last philosopher that Dr. Solomon discusses is Jean-Paul Sartre and, it should be noted, Solomon dedicates the last three tapes out of twelve to the man and his work. This is understandable seeing as how Sartre was essentially the champion of the Existentialist movement, giving it not only its name but also scores of writings and arguments to support it and, at times, apologize for it. Sartre as a man and writer is interesting, for not only was he awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature he refused the award becoming one of the first, and possibly only writer, to have done so. He spent most of his life writing, and it has been said that he supposedly wrote 20 pages of text a day, and when you remember that he wrote literature, philosophy, newspaper articles, magazine articles this becomes understandable but also incredibly incredible.

It also reminds that I really need to stop getting distracted while I write. I mean I start a review of a biography about Jim Henson or a sermon by Johnathan Edwards, and half an hour later I find myself drooling onto my keyboard while Google has pulled up somewhere around 100-200 pictures of Margot Robbie, and those are just the Harley Quinn Suicide Squad photos.

Solomon’s lecture wasn’t my first encounter with Sartre however. I stumbled across Sartre originally when my wife and I moved into her parents’ garage in a small apartment that had shower and A/C. Along with that was a filing cabinet filled with many of my mother-in-law’s books ranging from The Annals of Imperial Rome to Leaves of Grass to a small yellowed book titled Literary and Philosophical Essays. This was my first taste of Sartre, and while I recognized his talents I was pushed that summer towards Camus’s The Stranger instead and so Sartre went back on the bookshelf. It wasn’t until a few weeks back when my friend Christie mentioned that she and her girlfriend were moving and needed to get rid of some books…and honestly I can’t remember what happened next because I heard the word books and I began to growl and beat my chest making a “hungry” gesture. In the pile was a Modern Library copy titled Basic Writings of Existentialism, and opening the book I spotted the name Sartre again and turned to a passage simply titled Existentialism.

The essay was in fact an excerpt from one of Sartre’s longer works, Existentialism and Human Emotions, and was nothing but an apology, in the more historical sense, for the school of thought. From the beginning he makes his intention and concern clear:

First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate quietism because since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider action in this world as quite impossible. We should then end up in a philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we come in the end to a bourgeois philosophy. The communists in particular have made these charges. (341).

Sartre is working against a multi-fold front, and not just that dude in your history class who laughs when you tell him you’re majoring in philosophy. That ass-clown aside, Sartre is in a position where he has to defend his philosophical movement from those who either misunderstand his argument, or else his harshest critics which in this moment happen to be the Marxists. From afar it’s easy to understand why someone would look upon Existentialism with its calls to the freedom of the individual and the vital necessary role it places upon the idea of choice, as an elitist philosophy. If you’re working three jobs just to make ends meet, if you have four or five kids to take care of, if you tend to a sick parents or spouse your time is being constantly spent managing and satisfying the needs of others and so contemplation really isn’t a concrete reality. The people who have “time” tend to be rich people and so communists, who tend to despise rich people, would look upon a philosophy that seems to be nothing but air-headed contemplation with contempt.

Sartre however is calling bullshit on this and continuing. By addressing the criticism of his second set of critics, Christians. Once he has he makes the following claim:

In any case, what can be said from the very beginning is that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting and a human subjectivity. (343).

On the next page follows this with:

Can it be that what really scares them in the doctrine I shall try to present here is that it leaves to man a possibility of choice? To answer this question, we must re-examine it on a strictly philosophical plane. What is meant by the term existentialism? (343).

Before I get to that I should probably answer the immediate question put forth by my seasoned contester B——-: who the hell cares? It’s philosophy. It’s a bunch of bullshit that doesn’t really matter except to a few hipsters who listen to Dylan on Vinyl, smoke a hookah, and complain that Camus is so yesterday man.

First of all, kudos to my contester for finally nailing hipsters who smoke hookahs. Seriously puffing one of those is apparently worse than smoking cigarettes yet for some reason people do it. Second, unfortunately you’re wrong, both about philosophy and Dylan on Vinyl. Dylan is sick on Vinyl, and philosophy has more relevance to human existence than most people really recognize. Existentialism is not about Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the nature of reality. Existentialism relies on the fact that there is a reality and that human beings occupy space within it. From there the life of man is about choices, but a second philosophic concern needs to be addressed.

Jean-Paul Sartre was an atheist, and apart from the Marxists who criticize the philosophy, Sartre spends a fair amount of the essay addressing the concerns of Christians who argue that Existentialism is inherently atheistic. Sartre doesn’t attempt to defend those existentialists who may be Christian, however it important to note B——– that Sartre does try to make sure that Existentialism is not declared nihilism.

In one passage he notes:

The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God with the least possible expense. About 1880, some French teachers tried to set up a secular ethics which went something like this: God is useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding it; but, meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously and that they be considered as having a priori existence.

[…]

The existentialist, on the contrary, think is it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can be no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoievsky[sic] said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself. (349).

The first paragraph bothers me terribly and the second paragraph is painfully familiar. I’ll address the first part B—–. I distinctly remember one moment from my Intro to Philosophy class, and not just Dr. Krebs’s Hawaiin shirts and cowboy boots. We were discussing Ethics and at one point, after I had confessed to the class that I was an atheist, I argued that solipsism was a ridiculous position because it violated the basic principle that you should try to avoid being a dick to people. I argued that morality, or at least basic virtue towards other human beings was important. One of the students who I regularly talked to in class immediately asked, “Well what do you care, you’re an atheist.” This comment leads me to the second paragraph. When I was struggling with recognizing that I was an atheist my first thought was “if there’s no god then why should I be a good person?” This idea is not original for the very fact that Dostoyevsky wrote it and he lived at least a hundred years before I did.

Human beings look to god to find morality because god is beyond mortal understanding, as such he is ideal and beyond mortal constraints. The conflict however is that often the model of god that many Christians worship is not a philosophical god, but a purely benevolent creature that is static and does work well with moral grey area. As such whenever Christians hear phrases like “God is Dead,” or “You Don’t need god to be moral,” there is usually a violent reaction. I can attest to this for when I still had my faith I clung to the idea that it because of god that humans, and by extension myself, had to be moral or else all chaos would ensue. The conflict with this is that it is bullshit and reveals painful weakness.

If the reason human beings are moral is because they believe god exists it says a great deal about their so-called morality. I do believe however that Sartre makes a mistake arguing that the absence of god is the start of existentialism for there were some existentialists who believe in god. Despite naysayers Nietzsche believed in some kind of divinity, and Søren Kierkegaard wrote many essays and tracts on Christianity. Sartre pushes atheism because he himself is an atheist, and anyone who assumes that they cannot be an existentialist and someone who believes in god is simply trying to apply a particular brand of existentialism.

Sartre finishes his essay by addressing the absence of god by pointing out that it really doesn’t matter:

It isn’t trying to plunge man into despair at all. But if one calls every attitude of unbelief despair, like the Christians, then the word is not being used in its original sense. Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. There you’ve got our point of view. Not that we believe God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue. (366-7).

Looking at this B—– I return to the image of the man lying in a ditch beside the dead horse and screaming “why” with clenched fist towards the heavens. While this letter has focused mostly on Sartre’s atheism in the essay Existentialism, I do want it to serve as a kind of starting point. Sartre points out that it doesn’t matter ultimately whether or not god exists because it isn’t god that will make an individual person’s life. Existentialism is first and foremost a philosophy that argues that choices are what makes human beings who they are, and in fact those choices create our reality. Living in the age that we do Existentialism seems all the more important to consider since our life is made up of choices:

Do I vote for Hillary or Trump?

Do I buy eggs this week or should I try yogurt?

Should I watch the Deadpool or Labyrynth Honest Trailer?

Should I watch Pound the Alarm or Telephone?

Should I look for a job today or help my mother move?

Should I vacuum or have a beer and watch a movie?

Should I write, or should I do the dishes?

Should I pick up cat food now or just wait till Sunday?

Should I read The Hunger Games, or should I read that essay by Sartre that dude on that website wrote about?

Should I watch CNN or FOX News?

Should I be at all?

It may seem trivial or cliché from afar B——, but these little choices assume meaning for who we are, and what we make our life. Sartre’s essay is largely a defense, but it’s also a reminder that free will, or more importantly what we do with free will, is what makes our species unique. By adopting philosophies like Marxism or Christianity, both institutions that tend to usurp individual will, humans are rejecting the most important facet of their reality.

This is just a start B—-, and I’ll continue to try to answer any and all questions you have, and I’ll continue recommending books and essays for you to read. Just remember that personal ideologies and philosophies are never static. They are constantly being updated and altered and changed, and so right now Existentialism is young and flexible. Just keep writing and we’ll keep talking it out.

As the last part of your letter all I can say is, I told you so. Girls like it when you do stuff for them and don’t expect anything in return. For the record it’s kind of sad when you’re the woman I have to be telling you this stuff, but that’s reinforcing bad stereotypes. As per your second question, yes Margot Robbie is in Wolf of Wallstreet so it’s more than likely your girlfriend wants to watch it so she can see her naked, or else lounging seductively in a couch wearing nothing but her underwear and….and…

Anyway, have fun. I’m told it’s a good movie, then again it’s Scorsese so how could it not be? Until next time.

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

P.S.

If you were at all interested B—-, I found a blogpost about Sartre refusing the Nobel Prize. If you’re interested follow the link below:

I know I’ve mentioned Margot Robbie a lot in this essay B—–, but here’s a bit of a secret, I actually think Kate Micucci is a lot cuter, but then again I’m a sucker for brunette’s with a sharp sense of humor.

To be honest with you, living where I do in this country, I thought that Obama was supposed to be the Anti-Christ, or at least that’s what bumper-stickers tell me. I suppose it’s a fair mistake to make given the fact that misunderstood Philosophical masterpieces by German Philosophers tend to get filed on the shortlist of required reading in East Texas schools, and Nietzsche himself tends to be blacklisted more than Maya Angelou in this particular territory but only because he doesn’t include enough pictures of Margot Robbie.

I’ll stop trying to be being clever now and actually get to it

It was lovely to receive your letter and I so apologize for not having written for some time. Ending Graduate School has left me in an odd “limbo” where I have no idea what is next, what to do, or even what to think or read sometimes. I’ve jumped into philosophy for the most part, specifically existentialism, and while some would immediately say “huh boy” and prepare for the black turtleneck ensembles and Poetry slams with bongos about meaninglessness about existence, I’ve discovered a real purpose and drive in the philosophy. Life begins to make a little more sense as an existentialist because once you’re able to not worry about god and the afterlife, the choices you make really matter more because they’re all you’ve got. That’s part of what lead me to Nietzsche.

Before I get into it though I’m glad to hear about you and Charlie. Moving in together is a big step, and it can be rocky, but trust me once the two of you have your rhythms down it’s actually quite lovely having somebody waiting for you at home. It just gets frustrating when you’ve had a long day at work, and you come home from heavy traffic and you’re tired and frustrated at Barry from work, and when you drop your shit your partner walks up and says “we need groceries.” Apart from that, just remember that it’s fun and worth it over the long term. Also remember to occasionally buy her flowers or her favorite candy for no reason. It makes her feel loved, and you’ll find that it actually makes you feel like you’ve actually done something really nice.

Now as to Nietzsche what first needs to be resolved is the fact that his book The AntiChrist is not about atheism, and in fact Nietzsche was not an atheist himself. Many half-assed theologians and priests like to damn the man for his largely misunderstood comment in The Gay Science that “God is Dead.” By labeling him an atheist though it’s important to recognize that these particular theologians and priests are not only half-assed in their methodology, they’re also bad readers. Nietzsche doesn’t end the sentence on “dead,” he says “God is dead, and Man has killed him” and this has implications for the reader because it questions what many people, at least people in the United States, are raised to believe. When Nietzsche wrote this line more contemporary scientific methods and innovations were coming into being, and the notion of Modernity was becoming something relevant and important. In this atmosphere the Abrahamic god was becoming an anachronism to Nietzsche, yet still Christianity was adapting to it, or really fighting through it, and in this struggle the man found something to detest.

At first glance B——, and by that I mean simply looking at the title, many would assume that The AntiChrist is a book about God and Satan. In fact, the book is about the institution of Christianity and the modern man, particularly its effect upon him.

After arguing that mankind has not “progressed” in his new age he points to Christianity and says:

Christianity has sided with all that is weak and base, with all failures; it has made an ideal of whatever contradicts in spirit by teaching men to consider the supreme values of the spirit as something sinful, as something that leads into error as temptations. (571-2).

It may look B—– that I have in fact only confirmed the bias of many steadfast Christians who detest or distrust Friedrich Nietzsche because he is a godless contemptible atheist, but a closer inspection of this thesis and the rest of the book yields a different fact. It’s impossible to say that The AntiChrist doesn’t criticize Christianity, but it’s important to note that Nietzsche is not criticizing god. Nietzsche is often listed among the Existentialists, even though the man and his work was more of a precursor to that philosophical movement, and one of the largest misunderstandings of the general public is what Existentialism actually is. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to finish an essay about another essay by the French hyper-intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre (that dude who wrote No Exit that weird play you had to read in High School about the three people in hell, and one of them was a lesbian or something). The essay is literally titled Existentialism, and in it Sartre lays out the ideas of the movement.

Explaining what is the goal of existentialism he says:

Thus, Existentialism’s first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. (346).

The latter part of that quote goes into one of Sartre’s idea which is referred to as “being for others” but that’s for another essay. Sartre, like Camus and Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche, places all of man’s life into his own hands, and that B—- is largely why Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity is seen as atheistic or satanic. People are missing the fact that he’s attacking the human institution and not the divine.

He demonstrates this clearly in one later passages when he discusses priests:

The priest devalues, desecrates nature: this is the price of his existence. Disobedience of God, that is, of the priest, of “the Law,” is not called “sin”; the means for “reconciliation with God” are, as is meet, means that merely guarantee still more through submission to the priest: the priest alone “redeems.”

Psychologically considered, “sins” become indispensable in any society organized by priests: they are the real handles of power. The priest lives on sins, it is essential for him that people “sin.” Supreme principle: “God forgives those who repent”—in plain language” those who submit to the priest. (597-8).

I do wonder B—–, whether philosophers were fun to hang out with at parties sometimes, but right now my aim is philosophy and not the bottle (that’s for when I finish this letter). It’s easy B—-, to mistake Nietzsche’s criticism of priests in this passage as attacks upon the individual members of Christianity. After all, the priest does serve as either the conduit or else a spiritual guide to the divine, and by attacking the priests as spiritual leeches he implicates individual Christians as falling for the deception. I can’t in good conscience say though that this is Nietzsche suggesting that mankind doesn’t possess intelligence, but looking to Sartre’s point in Existentialism, there seems to be a more important idea here.

Nietzsche is noting that the modern man, the creature who has founded industry, nations, and scientific advancement it not fashioning a god that should give him strength or inspire new innovation. Rather the god that exists is either an antique of the infancy of the species that is holding mankind back, or else it is duplicitous lie fashioned by corrupt individuals who derive some kind of pleasure over having power over others. This isn’t an unfounded idea because in my youth I struggled with the concept of sin, and I know this being rather personal B—-, but my sin was masturbation.

As I wrote in recent essay I eventually discovered pornography when I was a young teenager, and while my parents had taught me about honestly and freely about sex ever since I was a kid, I have no real explanation for the religious struggle I experienced at first watching this. Like many young men I became fascinated/horrified by “lesbian porn” (which really isn’t an honest presentation of lesbianism since most of the women in those videos are perfectly willing to sleep with men too). The thought that two women, and by implication two men, could be attracted to each other sexually was something that my mind, and my environment at school, taught me was a sin, yet despite this it was a core sexual fantasy that I engaged in. Masturbation should have been something fun and enjoyable, but instead I compartmentalized it as a sin because the visiting priests, football coaches, and teachers would say it was, and so not knowing any better I cursed myself as I indulged in fantasies and self-abuse. I eventually got over this, though when the girls in my imagination eventually started becoming men too that started me on a long arduous path that I’ve explored in other essays, but I wanted to use this example B—– because it demonstrates a facet of Nietzsche’s argument.

It was through Priests (Baptist priests though, the Episcopal Priests never damned masturbation or homosexuality, and in fact they were some of the few who argued there was nothing wrong with it) that I saw masturbation as a sin, and this corruption of “thought crime” was implanted because the priests wanted to make sure nothing got between me and god. If a young boy is masturbating rather than praying or reading the Bible then he will begin to see no relevance of Christianity, and if he eventually drops his religion then there is no control. This was the attitude that I eventually began to observe in priests, and why I tend to distrust their supposed motivations. They always came with smiles B—–, and soft voices, and careful guarded warnings, but beneath that was always a power move.

That is contemporary Christianity, but even so in Nietzsche’s time this is still relevant for the “Modern Man” who was a cog in the wheel of machinery had only a finite amount of free time. A worker worked, and that remaining time was when he was afforded some freedom. Realistically the man would most often spend his wages on beer which would lead to temperance movements later on, but that space of time afforded man either some leisure or contemplation. As such the Church sought to dominate that time, however rather than recreate a god that would fit with contemporary innovation and progress, the Church held dogmatically to the old god as Nietzsche explains:

The Christian conception of God—God as god of the sick, God as a spider, God as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God—the formula for every slander against “this world,” for every lie about the “beyond”! God—the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness pronounced holy! (585-6).

This is another one of those quotes B—– that, while I’ve marked it in my copy of The AntiChrist with several stars, will probably only confirm a Christian’s bias against Nietzsche. It’s no longer acceptable to challenge faith because people don’t like to be challenged. They don’t like to grow. It may be my religious background, but I was always taught that the only way to grow faith, or lack-thereof, is to have your position challenged so that you can re-assess what it is that you actually believe.

Looking at this presentation of god I feel validated for Nietzsche perfectly explains what has always been my criticism of the divine that exists in mass Christianity. The god that exists is not a god that is to be understood and reconciled, it just is. Therefore, the Christian has only to accept god and then enter a state of eternal bliss.

To this, I respond bullshit.

The god that Nietzsche is criticizing is this perfect being but as Lex Luthor explained in Superman Vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice:

Lex Luthor: See, what we call God depends upon our tribe, Clark Joe, ’cause God is tribal; God takes sides! No man in the sky intervened when I was a boy to deliver me from daddy’s fist and abominations. I figured out way back if God is all-powerful, He cannot be all good. And if He is all good, then He cannot be all-powerful. And neither can you be.

For the record B—– I hated the movie in theatres, but loved the extended cut. Definitely see it. And for the record I am counting the days down until I can see Suicide Squad. Before you say anything it’s because the movie looks awesome and not just Margot Robbie is playing…playing…playing…

Ahem. Where was I? Uh…Harley Quinn wasn’t it?

Oh no, sorry Nietzsche Nietzsche. Sorry.

Anyway B—–, the point I’m trying to demonstrate is that the god Nietzsche is criticizing really hasn’t altered all that much and that in itself is damning. Religion is part of human culture, and while it tries to conform or adapt to contemporary settings, the real problem with this is that it’s nature shows more and more with each passing decade. The printing of “Teen Study Bibles” that exorcise lengthy and disturbing passages for the sake of winning over youth reveals this. The seducing of Lot by his daughters was never brought up in Sunday school because the god who was lax on incest was the same god who inspired the Psalms. Nietzsche is trying to argue that the god that exists does not challenge human beings to consider the real morality of his being, or the complexities of his universe. Rather than realizing that if god is all powerful he’s responsible for rape, murder, and torture, many choose to simply embrace an all loving god and drop the subject there.

For Nietzsche, and myself B——, this is a problem because it is painfully solipsistic, and while I could continue B—–, providing example after example, I just want to add one more quote before I end. Nietzsche remarks:

At this point I do not suppress a sigh. There are days when I am afflicted with a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man. And to leave no doubt concerning what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am fatefully contemporaneous. […] I go through the madhouse world of whole millennia, whether it be called “Christianity,” “Christian faith,” or “Christian church”—I am careful not to hold mankind responsible for its mental orders. But my feeling changes, breaks down, as soon as I enter modern times, our time. Our time knows better. (610-11).

I’ve said a lot here B—-, and I worry some of it was incoherent, but ultimately my concern was not to explain out an atheistic concept, but rather to defend Nietzsche from the title I so happily embrace. Many point to Nietzsche, and his rather bushy moustache, as a champion of godlessness, but those fools who try and hurl such mud only wind up looking like fools themselves.

In life Nietzsche felt there was nothing so contemptible as a man who lives without passions, and looking at the Church, not god, he saw an institution that drained and sapped passion from a grand source of ideas. Whether or not there is a god is one of the most important aspects of our reality, but simply believing in god does not make life simple, and Nietzsche’s The AntiChrist is a fight against those who would drain god of his unique philosophical position. Christianity becomes a vice rather than a source of inspiration because for many it is either a social club, a crutch from which to avoid discomfort, or else the source of a disturbing masochism rooted in the thought-crime of “sin” and Nietzsche is criticizing that.

His aim is to attack the church because man has entered into a new world, and rather than allow his notion of the divine to change he has become a slave to history and outdated philosophy. The question becomes B—–, shall Christianity adapt to the new stage of human evolution and society, or will it desperately cling to the idea that the source of all life and being honestly gives a flippin fuck about whether or not somebody masturbates to a Jenna Jameson video.

I’ll leave you to figure that out.

And seriously, buy your girl some flowers, she’ll appreciate it. Just make sure you get her favorite type or else that will get awkward, and she won’t want to hurt your feelings and so she’ll lie and then you’ll keep buying those and then ten years in she’ll confess she hates that type of flower and your feelings will get hurt and then…well you get it. Start with Roses and work your way from there.

Sincerely, yours in the best of confidence and support,

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

P.S.

All my quotes from Existentialism were taken from The Modern Library edition of Basic Writings of Existentialism. All quotes from The AntiChrist were cited from the Penguin edition of The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann.

P.P.S.

For the record I did nothing but listen to Allison Kraus on Pandora while writing this letter B—-, which I find hysterical since most of her songs are either spiritual in nature, or else outright hymns and Christian folk-songs. This B—–, is what is sometimes referred to as Cognitive Dissonance, but I’ll accept that because every now and then the O, Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack will come on and you know I love me some Soggy Bottom Boys.

P.P.P.S

One last note, as for your question about your girlfriend’s folder on her computer full of photos of Margot Robbie, I really don’t have anything for you except the sentiment: can you really blame her? I mean I…I…I…what was I saying?